Star Wars and History Read online

  CONTENTS

  Introduction: The Forces of History and Histories of the Force

  Part I: “Only Imperial Stormtroopers Are So Precise”

  Chapter 1: Why Rebels Triumph

  Keys to Rebel Success: A Trilogy of Wars

  People’s War: A Trilogy of Phases

  Why Empires Lose: A Trilogy of Reasons

  Evil Incarnate?: The Emperor, Vader, and the Rebel Cause

  A Coda: The United States in Iraq and Afghanistan

  Chapter 2: “Part of the Rebel Alliance and a Traitor”

  A Symbol of Hope

  The Maid, the Countess, and the Padawan

  Keep Mum. She’s Not So Dumb!

  The Princess and the Partisanes

  Armed and Dangerous

  Resistance: Something Old and Something New

  Chapter 3: Elegant Weapons for Civilized Ages

  “Ancient Weapons and Hokey Religions”: The Origin of the Jedi Order

  “It Binds the Galaxy Together”: Qi, the Force, and the Shaolin Monks

  “Let Go Your Conscious Self”: Samurai and the Zen Art of Lightsaber Maintenance

  “Some Damned-Fool Idealistic Crusade”: The Jedi and the Knights Templar

  “No Such Thing as Luck”

  Chapter 4: “A House Divided”

  Separatists, Revolutionaries, and Those Loyal to the Empire

  “Have You Come to Free Us?”: The Roots of Civil Wars

  “Begun the Clone War Has”: How Wars Divide Republics and Empires

  Plans and People

  “You Were My Brother”: Border States and Uncivil Divisions

  “No Time for Sorrows”: Costs and Consequences of Civil Wars

  Part II: “Join Me, and Together We Can Rule the Galaxy as Father and Son”

  Chapter 5: I, Sidious

  The Roman Republic, Augustus, and the Sith Lord Emperor

  “Sounds an Awful Lot Like a Dictatorship to Me”: Palpatine’s Subversion of the Galactic

  A Tale of Two Emperors: Palpatine and Napoleon

  Today Coruscant, Tomorrow the Galaxy!: Nazi Germany and Palpatine

  “The Last Remnants of the Old Republic Have Been Swept Away”

  Chapter 6: Teen Queen

  “You Think a Princess and a Guy Like Me . . . ?”

  “The Queen Will Not Approve”

  “She’s a Politician, and They’re Not to Be Trusted”

  “I Was Not Elected to Watch My People Suffer and Die”

  “Are You an Angel?”

  “Look, I Ain’t in This for Your Revolution, and I’m Not in It for You, Princess.”

  Chapter 7: “There’s Always a Bigger Fish”

  Longer Ago, Farther Away

  Tyrants: Light or Dark?

  “For a Safe and Secure Society . . .”

  “The Dark Side Clouds Everything”

  “A Pathway to Many Abilities Some Consider to Be Unnatural”

  And Yet . . .

  Chapter 8: “Fear Is the Path to the Dark Side”

  “This Station Is Now the Ultimate Power in the Universe. I Suggest We Use It.”

  “Fear Will Keep the Local Systems in Line. Fear of This Battle Station.”

  “Remember Back to Your Early Teachings. ‘All Who Gain Power Are Afraid to Lose It.’”

  Part III: “Excuse Me, Sir, but That Artoo Unit Is in Prime Condition, a Real Bargain”

  Chapter 9: From Slavery to Freedom in a Galaxy Far, Far Away

  The Universality of Human Bondage

  “There Is Still Slavery in the Galaxy”: Star Wars and Slavery

  Anakin Skywalker, Slave

  Slavery and Luke Skywalker

  “You’ll Soon Learn to Appreciate Me”: Sex, Slavery, and Star Wars

  “We Don’t Serve Their Kind Here”: Beyond Chattel Slavery

  Chapter 10: “Greed Can Be a Powerful Ally”

  “You Old Pirate”: Merchant Bandits on the Edge of Empire

  “Business Is Business”: From Independent Traders to Multinationals

  “A Blockade of Deadly Battleships”: Tactics of Isolation and Intimidation

  “The Oppression of the Trade Federation”: Commercial Empires at Their Height

  “Make Them Suffer”: Cruelty and Greed under the Rule of Commercial Monopolies

  “Lord Sidious Promised Us Peace”: The End of Commercial Empires

  Chapter 11: Coruscant, the Great Cities of Earth, and Beyond

  Going to Town

  Reaching for the Sky: Cities Go High

  London and Coruscant: Cities at the Center of It All

  New York: The Empire City

  The City of Tomorrow

  The Jedi Council

  Acknowledgments

  Illustration Credits

  Index

  Supplemental Images

  To all our friends in fandom: you share the love.

  Copyright © 2013 Lucasfilm Ltd. & TM. All rights reserved. Used Under Authorization

  2013 Year of first publication of the Works.

  Cover Image: Pyramids © iStockphoto_000016560757; Night Sky © iStockphoto_000008574407; Princess Amidala and Coruscant cityscape © Lucasfilm Ltd. & TM. All rights reserved.

  Cover Design: C. Wallace

  Text design and composition by Forty-five Degree Design, LLC

  Illustration credits begin on page 324 and constitute an extension of the copyright page.

  Published by John Wiley & Sons, Inc., Hoboken, New Jersey

  Published simultaneously in Canada

  No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, scanning, or otherwise, except as permitted under Section 107 or 108 of the 1976 United States Copyright Act, without either the prior written permission of the Publisher, or authorization through payment of the appropriate per-copy fee to the Copyright Clearance Center, 222 Rosewood Drive, Danvers, MA 01923, (978) 750-8400, fax (978) 646-8600, or on the web at www.copyright.com. Requests to the Publisher for permission should be addressed to the Permissions Department, John Wiley & Sons, Inc., 111 River Street, Hoboken, NJ 07030, (201) 748-6011, fax (201) 748-6008, or online at http://www.wiley.com/go/permissions.

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  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data:

  Star wars and history / edited by Nancy R. Reagin and Janice Leidl.—1st ed.

  p. cm.

  Includes index.

  ISBN 978-0-470-60200-3 (cloth : alk. paper); ISBN 978-1-118-28188-8 (ebk);

  ISBN 978-1-118-28373-8
(ebk); ISBN 978-1-118-28525-1 (ebk)

  1. Star Wars films—History and criticism. 2. Motion pictures and history. I. Reagin, Nancy Ruth, 1960– II. Liedl, Janice.

  PN1995.9.S695S74 2012

  791.43′75—dc23

  2012028584

  Introduction

  The Forces of History and Histories of the Force

  Janice Liedl

  “The Force surrounds us and penetrates us; it binds the galaxy together.”

  —Obi-Wan Kenobi, A New Hope

  History is like the Force. It surrounds us, sometimes literally, when we walk through old cities and tour ruins or re-creations from decades or centuries past. Historical memories saturate our cultures, sometimes producing shocking and unsettling reinterpretations of the past and its heroes and villains. History also binds us together, if not at the galactic level, still on a broad scale, crisscrossing the globe with stories that bring us closer together in shared wonder and fascination. If you are cut off from knowledge of your own history (and that of your family) you can be misled or even taken badly by surprise, as Luke Skywalker discovers. History even makes for a powerful ally, as Yoda might have observed: because knowing something of the past can help you avoid at least those mistakes.

  It’s good to keep Han Solo’s skepticism in mind, however, when comparing history and the Force. No historian would suggest that there’s a mystical energy field controlling our destiny or that of the societies we study. Instead, historians emphasize how people are the true key to unlocking the mysteries of the past. Empires don’t rise and fall by themselves, slavery isn’t inherent in human nature, and even corporations are made up of many different individuals. Some people held more power in history than others by virtue of their birth, profession, or fortune, rather like Padmé Amidala experienced as queen and later senator. But such prominence isn’t enough to shield a person from the all-too-human realities of heartbreak and despair, as Padmé found when her husband turned to the dark side. It’s the repetition of these familiar themes in history—victory and defeat, joy and sorrow, the urge to possess and control, exploration and loss—that has inspired claims that history repeats itself. In reality, history is made up of millions, even billions, of unique stories waiting to be explored and shared.

  Some people will say that laying out these stories is easy, that history is nothing more than establishing “the facts” and handing them to readers. Following the great nineteenth-century scholar Leopold von Ranke, historians have sometimes claimed that their job is simply to “show how it really was,” as if history was a single, marvelous painting you could understand in one viewing. The truth is that history is messy, complicated, and always changing with the discovery of new information and new interpretations. That’s what Luke realizes after Darth Vader’s shocking claim that he is Luke’s father. His entire personal history had been up-ended by this revelation that he knows to be true, even as he struggles to accept it.

  This wasn’t the first time that Luke saw his personal history rewritten around him. In his childhood, his guardians, Owen and Beru Lars, assure Luke that his father had been an ordinary navigator on a spice freighter. Obi-Wan destroys that history in a short order when he hands Luke his father’s lightsaber and explains that Anakin Skywalker was a skilled pilot and brave Jedi warrior, who was murdered by Darth Vader. That revelation powers much of Luke’s determination to fight the Empire and Vader’s evil until he learns to his great distress that Vader isn’t Anakin’s murderer but Luke’s father. In Return of the Jedi, when Luke confronts Obi-Wan’s ghost in the swamps of Dagobah, Luke isn’t only expressing his hurt and confusion; he’s also challenging his former mentor’s use and abuse of history:

  Luke: Ben! Why didn’t you tell me? You told me that Darth Vader betrayed and murdered my father.

  Obi-Wan: Your father was seduced by the dark side of the Force. He ceased to be Anakin Skywalker and “became” Darth Vader. When that happened, the good man who was your father was destroyed. So what I told you was true . . . from a certain point of view.

  Luke: A certain point of view?

  Obi-Wan: Luke, you’re going to find that many of the truths we cling to depend greatly on our own point of view.

  Changing your point of view about the past isn’t easy. Luke eventually comes to terms with the good and bad in his father’s past. He writes a new conclusion to Anakin’s tragic history with a surprising offer of redemption. In the end, Luke grows enough as a person and as a Jedi to see his father and his own history from a more understanding and forgiving point of view. That ability literally rewrites the history of his galaxy.

  The history of the Star Wars galaxy goes far beyond the adventures of the Skywalker family, although Anakin’s own rise and fall also reveals much about the cultures and traditions active in the galaxy during the time of the Republic’s decline. There are grand themes of state-building and destruction set against humble stories of traders, tamers, and farmers. Star Wars unfolds personal histories, like the one linking Han Solo to the former owner of the Millennium Falcon, Lando Calrissian, or the long-standing friendship between frequent political allies Princess Leia and Obi-Wan Kenobi. We see hints at lost civilizations glimpsed in the ruins of Yavin 4 where Princess Leia and the Rebel Alliance make their last stand against the Death Star. There are venerable institutions such as the Jedi Order, with an intriguing history all its own. Their histories tie into the broader galactic history, sometimes in vital ways, as when tampering with the Jedi Archives led to Yoda chiding Master Kenobi for having lost a planet (a feat earthly historians can never equal). Other groups in the Star Wars galaxy have a less savory past, such as the Hutts’ criminal enterprises on the fringes of first the Republic and then the Empire. Altogether, these historical elements within Star Wars provide depth and color that brings that distant galaxy to vivid life.

  The histories we see in Star Wars are reflections or expressions of historical dynamics and individuals from Earth’s own histories. George Lucas drew upon both myth and his understanding of real history in crafting the stories of the Star Wars galaxy, as the essays in this collection illustrate. Each chapter takes one set of individuals or institutions from Star Wars and compares it with the real historical counterparts that Lucas had in mind when he created his own heroes, villains, and galactic-spanning organizations and struggles. Lucas provided the scholars who worked on these essays with information about the historical models that were his inspiration for many facets of the Star Wars galaxy and characters, reading and commenting on each of these essays as their authors developed them.

  This book—the product of our collaboration with Star Wars’ creator—reveals how historical cultures and people provided the inspiration for the far-away galaxy’s characters, societies, and politics in ways ranging from the soldaderas of the Mexican Revolution as models for Princess Leia’s hairstyle choices and gung-ho attitude, to the more sinister parallels between the fate of the Roman Republic and its far-distant counterpart, which Palpatine undermined in order to create his Empire. Countless reflections of our history and cultures can be seen in the Star Wars galaxy, from medieval knightly traditions that can also be found in the Jedi Order to the fear of super-weapons that galvanized the world during the Cold War, which provided the impetus for the terrifying Death Star. Setting our histories against those of Star Wars sheds new light on both: many details are freshly illuminated, and some of these revelations are surprising.

  Drawing on histories from our own past increases our enjoyment and understanding of the cultures and traditions that gave us Padmé, Leia, Anakin, Luke, Yoda, Obi-Wan, Han, Chewbacca, Darth Vader, Emperor Palpatine, the Sith, and all of the other enthralling figures of the Star Wars galaxy. Open your mind to the invisible forces of history and you’ll gain a greater appreciation of how that Force is a part of Star Wars: a rich and rewarding galaxy that combines history and myth with creative magic.

  We will use the following abbreviations in this book:

  Star Wars: Epis
ode I The Phantom Menace = The Phantom Menace

  Star Wars: Episode II Attack of the Clones = Attack of the Clones

  Star Wars: Episode III Revenge of the Sith = Revenge of the Sith

  Star Wars: Episode IV A New Hope = A New Hope

  Star Wars: Episode V The Empire Strikes Back = The Empire Strikes Back

  Star Wars: Episode VI Return of the Jedi = Return of the Jedi

  Star Wars: The Clones Wars = The Clone Wars

  Part I

  “Only Imperial Stormtroopers Are So Precise”

  THE WARS IN STAR WARS

  Chapter 1

  Why Rebels Triumph

  How “Insignificant” Rebellions Can Change History

  William J. Astore

  “The more you tighten your grip,

  Tarkin, the more star systems will slip

  through your fingers.”

  —Princess Leia Organa, A New Hope

  In the climactic battle scene of Return of the Jedi, an openly contemptuous Emperor boasts to Luke Skywalker that he is about to witness the end of his “insignificant rebellion.” Such was not the case, as the Rebels end up triumphing against the longest of odds. Interestingly, in 2003, Lieutenant General Ricardo Sanchez, the U.S. commanding general in Iraq after Operation Iraqi Freedom, dismissed the growing insurgency in that country as “strategically and operationally insignificant,” an assessment that was proved very much wrong by subsequent events.1 Rebellions are indeed often very significant and very difficult to defeat, especially when they are driven by powerful ideologies and sustained by committed believers willing to sacrifice all.

  Whether in real life or in the Star Wars galaxy, history is not always on the side of the bigger battalions. Consider the American Revolutionary War. The British Empire had a larger and more professional army than the American rebels, a far larger and more powerful navy, and a wealth of recent military experience, yet the upstart rebels prevailed. To cite just one year, in 1776 Britain’s General William Howe landed thirty-two thousand troops at Staten Island supported by ten ships-of-the-line and twenty frigates manned by ten thousand sailors. Clearly outclassed, George Washington and his Continental Army suffered serious setbacks in New York and New Jersey but still managed to keep a viable presence in the field. Sustaining them throughout these defeats was a shared belief in the cause of freedom, as made manifest by that year’s Declaration of Independence.